Change Your Brain Every Day - Can Dancing Improve Your Brain Function? With Julianne Hough

Episode Date: April 13, 2020

Right now we’re experiencing an unprecedented period in history. With so many of us stuck at home, the temptation is high to put on Netflix and binge eat. But what if this period is really an opportunity for transformation? In the first episode of a series with dancer/actress Julianne Hough, she and the Amens discuss how expressing the body through movement such as dance can rewire your brain.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Hey, everybody. We are just so excited and honored to have Emmy Award winning actress, singer, performer, Julianne Hough, known to audiences around the world, world of film, television,

music. She became a household name virtually overnight as a two-time professional champion on ABC's top-rated Dancing with the Stars. I mean, you know who she is. What we're going to talk about today is the intersection between dance and the brain. And she has a new dance method called Kingry, which she's done on Oprah's 2020 Vision, Your Life in Focus. And Julianne, both Tan and I are just so overjoyed to have you on the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Thank you so much. I'm so honored to be included and to have a conversation that I'm so passionate about with you. Well, and this is a hard time. I mean, we're going to get into sort of the neuroscience of dance and your passion and why it's important to you. But before we started, we were just talking about the anxiety and trauma and grief that many people are experiencing.

But it's also, as you were talking about, a time to heal. I love what you were saying. It's about being an eternal optimist. Maybe you can share that with our audience. Yeah, of course. I mean, look, we are in an unprecedented time. Nothing like this has happened for 100 years. And there's a lot of fear and anxiety surrounding it and and I'm an eternal optimist and so you know sometimes I can be annoying to be around because I always see the bright side of things but what I am really grateful for that I keep you know having gratitude moments of every morning is looking outside in Los Angeles and seeing blue

skies and the green on the mountains and feeling the air for the first time that doesn't feel polluted. And just realizing that the earth is healing itself and recalibrating and giving us an opportunity to do the same. And look, at the end of the day, I know I have a luxury and a privilege that I have a home and that I am healthy and safe, where a lot of people don't have that. And so my part and my contribution to society is to raise my vibration of gratitude and positivity to share that hope and joy that we can all receive in the world. And, you know, I was talking to someone else the other day about how, you know, it's like a cocoon situation.

We are safe at home. We are cocooning where we are growing, where we can de-layer all of the past belief systems of this old paradigm of how the world has worked and actually transform into the people we want to become as a new humanity steps into this new age. And that's what I'm excited about. I love that. I love what you said about what you have to offer and what you're contributing. And I've read a little bit over time about your story. And I think your vulnerability over, you know, just what you've shared about your life and how you've overcome those stories of hope help people, I think,

especially when they're having a hard time. So I just want to thank you for that. Because, you know, I mean, it's easy for people to look at someone like you, or, you know, even someone like us and go, Yeah, but it's easy for them. And that's not true. And so I just, you know, thank you for being vulnerable in the past and sharing things about yourself and that's you know i just i appreciate it well the so people are stuck at home and they ask us all the time well what do i do and And too often they sit in front of the couch and get on Netflix when exercise during this time is so important for your sanity. Yes. Head to head against antidepressants. Exercise has been shown to be equally effective.

Plus, exercise has no side effects. It only has good effects. And for some of us, it's therapy. So I have a question. Can we, so exercise is prescribed, right? When you go to therapy, exercise is prescribed as a prescription. So maybe we can actually finally find

like a prescription to dance because I think that that is one of the healthiest things that we can do for our brain because it activates an emotion as well. And I mean, you know more about the brain than I do, but the little research that I have had in comparison has shown me that when you activate your life force energy by moving and exercising and getting your blood pumping and all of that, you're accessing like all this life force energy. But when you dance, you're actually creating an emotion, which is a new memory or experience. And that actually helps build new connectors in the brain, which is

healthy for the brain. So we're de-stressing we're moving our body we're getting healthy from the inside out but then we're also like creating new belief systems which I think is what we need in the world right now so let's do that he's been talking about dance for a long time and how much she likes it. Well, but there's a specific reason. And how we met, who works with you, who's one of your dancers, had a bad car accident and had a head injury. And she came to our Chicago clinic and saw Dr. Criotto, who you love. And her brain looked way better than we thought, given what had happened to it. And that's when she told us about what she did and about Kingrey and you. It's Kinergy.

Yeah, Kinergy. Yeah. And so that's how we got introduced. And one of the reasons I've been a huge fan of Dan's, now I step on her, so that's another discussion we don't have to have right now. But if people see the brain, here we're looking underneath the brain. Well, the back bottom part of the brain is called the cerebellum. And the cerebellum is Latin for little brain because it's only 10% of the brain is called the cerebellum and the cerebellum is latin for little brain uh because

it's only 10 of the brain's volume but it contains half of the brain's neurons wow it's i call it the rodney dangerfield part of the brain because it gets no respect but it's incredibly important and it's involved in physical coordination, but also thought coordination, how quickly you can integrate new information. So how do you activate the brain is you activate the cerebellum with coordination exercises and dance, which you've already said is way more than exercise, but it's activating this most important part of the brain, which then helps with memory. It helps with learning. It helps with processing speed along with mood. I mean, it's like, now, this is something you want a bottle. And, you know, since 1987, the incidence of antidepressant use has gone up 400% in the United States. 23% of women between the ages of 20 and 60 are taking antidepressant medication.

That's not okay with me. And if we can teach the world to dance, we would probably cut that in half. Oh! That is like... My mom actually lost someone very close to her when she was grieving. She was sad. She was lonely.

And she took up dancing. And suddenly she was... Well, right now, sadly, she's not able to do it as much. But it made her happy. She said, She was lonely and she took up dancing and suddenly she was, well, right now, I believe she's not able to do it as much, but she, it made her happy. She said, she goes, this is the one thing that is making me happy. And so I thought, you know, that's really cool. That's for a grieving, you know,

older female to be able to say that about dance, bringing her sort of back to life. And it's something people can do at home. You can do dance anywhere. And I think there's a big misconception that you have to be good or that you have to do something right to dance. And that's just not the case. You know, we were born to move our bodies. We were designed to dance. When you look at babies and they're in their high chairs the minute they hear music what do they do they just start grooving I mean if you look right now all the things people are posting on social media are of kids

dancing right and people dancing because it brings joy and so our bodies are designed to move and to celebrate our freedom of expression. And somewhere along our journey, we told ourselves that we weren't good enough or that we're not dancers or that we had to be, you know, perfect in what we did. And that's just not the case. And so, you know, what Kinergy does is we activate people's imaginations to come back to that child, like in enjoyment and self-expression. And while we're doing that, we're breathing. So we're activating this like internal energy and then we're moving our body at the same time. So we're completely present on what we're doing. We can't focus on anything else because we're just focused on our body moving and

our breath and we're activating our imagination to play. And when people start doing that, all of a sudden they have all these releases of emotion that happens and then they feel free within themselves. And this anxiety or this depression that feels heavy all of a sudden feels liberated. And then again, maybe you can talk more about why this works so much with the brain and the functionality. But like, I've seen people who have literally transformed their belief system of what's possible, where before they've felt like, oh, well, this is my life. And that's going to be at the rest of my life and then after they do this class they think I want to create I want to I want to become this I want to cook again or all of a sudden there's this effervescence for life that just happens

and they feel alive again when we come back I want you to tell us more about your story and how this became important to you. Stay with us. We're here with Juliana Huff. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements

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